My Almost Lover
by FullMetal Alchemistress
Summary: [Post HTTYD2] Astrid finds a distraught Hiccup outside the Great Hall. As a best friend should, she manages to lift his spirits. Hiccstrid Drabble for my feels. Second Oneshot added! Snoggletog Age 20! Return of the yaknogg! It's gonna be great!
1. Chapter 1

**A oneshot I do not intend to do anything else with. Just a little drabble to get the feels out…****ALSO, TITLES ARE HARD FOR ME SO THEY TYPICALLY END UP BEING WHATEVER SONG IS STUCK IN MY HEAD AT THE TIME SO….SORRY. COULDA BEEN WORSE CUZ IT'S BEEN "BITCHIN SUMMER" BY AVRIL FOR LIKE A WEEK NOW…..**

Toothless watched with wide eyes as his human friend paced back and forth in front of the Great Hall's door. He let out a small sound to try and comfort his emotionally troubled rider. Hiccup dragged a hand roughly through his hair and spun on the heel of his foot, changing direction.

A hand found its way down Toothless head and he turned to see Astrid standing beside him in the grass watching Hiccup mutter to himself, hands flying about, clearly troubled.

"Everyone's waiting _inside_, you know," she spoke after a minute of watching his frantic pacing. Hiccup froze in his tracks and twisted around towards her, nearly falling over himself. "I think your mom was looking for you, too."

Hiccup gestured towards her and averted his eyes. His jaw worked, trying to find the word, but nothing cohesive escaped. Finally, he settled on an angry release of air. "This is so messed up," he groaned, throwing up his hands.

Astrid bit her lip and walked up to Hiccup, taking his wrists to keep him still. "You're stressing out Toothless," she murmured, throwing a look over her shoulder towards the sad dragon, who was letting out noises in an attempt to comfort Hiccup. "Just calm down a little. What's wrong?"

"There is—there was this…this song my parents were singing," Hiccup began frantically. "They said it was 'their song' or something. And I got to thinking—how did either of them remember is _twenty years later_?"

"Good memory?" Astrid guessed quietly, not seeing where this was going.

"There were times when I think my dad would mutter it to himself, when I knew he was missing my mom. I could never hear what he was saying, but the tune was familiar."

"So your dad sang their song ever time he missed her—Hiccup, that's not a bad thing," Astrid told him. "And I'm not surprised either—so tell me what's really wrong."

"I'm not the chief," he blurted. "Being the chief—that was…that was Dad's thing. My thing was dragons. But now that's Mom's thing. But being chief—I can't be chief. I was never made to be chief. I'm not ready for this. Astrid—_you _should be the chief."

Astrid offered up a small but sad smile. "I'm glad you trust me enough to dump that much responsibility on me like that, but I'm not the chief Berk needs right now." Hiccup opened his mouth to disagree, she knew, so she quickly continued. "It's my fault Drago was looking for you. It's my fault he went to Berk. It was my decision to go back to look for you and when he caught us, I was mouthing off and said some things I shouldn't have. Berk needs a chief to lead the peace, not an army."

Hiccup pressed his lips together and looked over her shoulder at the dozens of homes of his village. "I don't know how to be a chief," he admitted. Sure, his father had shown him a thing or two, and he'd watch his dad to the job for twenty years. But to do it himself was a wholly different issue.

But Astrid just let out a laugh and Hiccup frowned.

"Thanks for your support, Astrid."

"Hiccup," she started, dropping his wrists to cup his face, keeping his eyes on her. "You've been leading Berk since you were fifteen and brought dragons to Berk. Do you know how many times you mother, as an adult, tried to change the minds of this village? And you—as a fifteen year old, managed to do what she couldn't.

"And besides that, you have your mother to help you. She was by our dad's side when he was learning how to be chief. I'm sure she knows a thing or two," Astrid assured him. Her heads slid from his face to rest on his shoulders, the fingers on her left hand flicking the braids near his neck. Her voice grew soft and she said, "I'll always be by your side, too, you know. Because I believe in you and I know you can do it."

A small smile made its way onto Hiccup's face and he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. "Astrid," he began, "you are amazing."

"I know," she replied with a satisfied smirk.

Hiccup simply laughed and pressed his lips to hers, showing her just how much she appreciated her words of encouragement. "Marry me," he breathed between kisses.

Astrid jerked back and looked at him for a second before she felt a not-so-gentle nudge from behind her that nearly knocked them both over. She looked down at Toothless before looking back at Hiccup, grinning. "Yes."


	2. Chapter 2

**THIS IS A FLUKE. I WILL NOT BE ADDING ANYMORE HTTYD ONESHOTS OKAY. Well maybe. But there will never be regular postings. My summer quarter classes start up on Monday and I have classes from 8AM until 5PM and I applied to be a student ambassador and I have shit to do okay I AM AN ADULT AND CAN ONLY SPEND SO MUCH TIME CRYING OVER FANDOMS.**

**This came from a status I made earlier today which turned into a tumblr post which now has like 500 notes so….SNOGGLETOG. RETURN OF THE YAKNOGG. IT'S GONNA BE GREAT.**

Hiccup sighed and brushed his hands together, a cloud of dirt dissipating into the air. He couldn't help the small smile on his face as he looked around at the village. It had been nearly 8 months since _then_, but all of the ice had been cleared away, and most of the houses had been rebuilt to livable conditions. There were still tons that needed to be done, but Hiccup knew all of that could wait. Just as planned, he had worked his butt off in the morning to get the days' to-do list so that he could go flying with Toothless before the festivities were supposed to start.

Snoggletog. The first one since his dad…since Hiccup had become chief.

_"I know what it's like to miss someone you love this time of year. But what do we do, when they can't be here for the holiday? We celebrate them!"_

The words rang through Hiccup's head. Wise words from a wise man.

"Toothless?" Hiccup called out as he walked into the stables where he he'd last seen his dragon slinking around. "You in here, Bud?" Some of the other dragons perked up and paid him a glance, but most just continued eating and sleeping. "Alright." He turned on his heel and headed towards the arena, his second guess since that's where Astrid would be holding Dragon Training.

On his slow trek there, neither the twins nor Snotlout had seen his dragon since earlier that morning when he'd gone with his mother to the stables to be fed.

"Yaknogg!"

Hiccup stopped outside of the arena and cringed. He could see Astrid following some of the students around, offering them some of her…creation. After recovering from the shock of the return of something he had hoped had been long forgotten, he gathered the courage he needed and headed towards the blond.

"Uhm, Astrid," he began, approaching slowly, hands ready to reject any offering of the mugs of sludge in her hands.

"Hiccup, would you—"

"Actually, Astrid, why don't you just…uh…I don't think anyone here—"

"Choose your words carefully, Hiccup," she threatened, face calm.

"Have you seen Toothless?" he said instead, quickly.

Astrid's face lost its tension and she glanced around the arena behind her. "Actually, I haven't seen him all day."

Something in Hiccup's stomach hit the floor and his blood began to run cold with adrenaline. "Okay, thanks. If you see him, let me know."

Astrid hurridly thrust her drinks into a passing student's hands, who dumped them on the ground as soon as she was back to facing Hiccup. "Hey, I'll come with you. Stormfly and I can—"

"No, no, it's okay," Hiccup told her with a wave of his hand and half a smile. "I just wanna be—I'll see you tonight, okay?" He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and headed back out of the arena to look for his mother.

But his mother was even less of a help than everyone else was. She just smiled and said, "I'll let you know when I see him," when he asked if she'd seen him take off after breakfast.

So that's when he found himself climbing through a forest he knew without a map and stalking around a lake in a cove, charcoal scribbling down into his journal frantically. When his legs got tired after what felt like hours of pacing, he dropped down onto a rock near the water's edge and pulled out his map.

"Haven't seen many new islands lately, have we?" he muttered to no one but himself and he smoothed the map flat. His finger traced a line from Berk to the island his mom had been staying at. By boat, it was a bit of a trip. By dragon, an afternoon flight, maybe.

"So where could Toothless be?" he wondered. Without a rider, he could swim to one of three islands as long as the tides were calm. But not likely. If someone had opened his tail so that he could fly on his own, Hiccup had no doubts he could fly to his mother's old place with little trouble.

Hiccup pursed his lips and placed a pebble on that island and on the three surrounding Berk. He went ahead and put another pebble on Dragon Island and then scratched his head. "But why would he leave Berk to begin with?"

The only thing he could think of would be to visit dragons as an alpha. But usually they either came to him or he bothered Hiccup until either he or Astrid flew with him. But this was different—somehow he must have managed to sneak off the island. Unless he didn't.

Just as he hopped off his rock and began to pace again, a dragon's cry tore his eyes from the ground and he watched as Stormfly landed and Astrid slid off her back.

"You've been gone for two hours, I was getting worried. The festivities are going to start soon."

"Astrid," he started, voice shaking. "I still can't find Toothless. Please tell me you've seen him since I last saw you."

She bit her lip and shook her head. "I haven't."

"What am I gonna do?" He turned away and began to fold his map back up, flicking the pebbles into the water. "What if something happened to him?" He jammed the fold of papers back into place on his flight suit, but they weren't sliding in right and he was getting increasingly frustrated. "Where could he have gone to?"

Astrid took the map from his hands and put it away from him. She took his face in her hands to force him to look at her. "Calm down," she said slowly. "As much as you want to freak out and spend the next week looking for him—you can't. The village has to come first for just a few hours, and then I will take you to every island in the world until we find Toothless."

"How long do we have until everything starts?" he asked, taking a breath and heading towards Stormfly.

Astrid gave him a smile. "Enough time to do a quick fly around the village to see if we can spot him. Let's go."

XXX

Hiccup let out a breath and pushed his food around his plate. It had officially been way too long since anyone on the island had seen Toothless. No one had seen him since that morning, nearly the whole day. The sun had long set and his anxiety rose.

Astrid, next to him and chatting away with his mother on his other side, looked up and then turned to stare at him.

"What?" he asked after seeing the suspicious smile on her face. He glanced at his mom, who was wearing a poker face, taking small bites of her own food.

"Nothing," she said, still smiling. "I just wanna see this."

He opened his mouth to respond, but instead, was nearly knocked out of his seat when something shoved itself between him and Astrid. He registered something large and black surrounding him before he found himself soaking wet.

"Toothless!" he cried, disgusted. "You know that doesn't wash out!" But his disgust and anxiety died away when he realized that not only was Toothless sitting next to the table, jittery and excited, but his vision was obscured by a poorly placed helmet. "You found my helmet!"

Toothless let out and excited growl, tail thumping people's chairs behind them. Hiccup dropped his dripping helmet onto the table, much to Astrid's objections, and stood up to embrace his dragon. "Thank you, Bud. This is the second time, now." As he pulled away, he leaned to get a view of his tail, noting that the lever for his tail fin had, in fact, been opened so that he could fly on his own.

Valka laughed when her son threw a look at her over his shoulder. "Oh, come on, do ya think I would have let him go on his own if I thought he would be in danger? You insult me, dear."

"I'm not accusing you of anything," Hiccup said, returning to his seat. He threw his leftover fish towards his best friend. "Next time let me know, Toothless. Alright? You've done this to me twice now."

Astrid laughed and began retelling the story of their first Snoggletog with dragons.


End file.
